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Dad had a heart attack. He is in a coma, on LIFE SUPPORT.
- Dad had heart attack 10 days ago.
- Doctors are giving two options: tracheostomy or stop life support
- CT Brain Scans show hypoxia and global cerebral edema
- From the cardiac arrest, it was 50 minutes until his heart started again
- He is in a comatose state, with no sedation, only involuntary movements
- Ventilator helping him breathe
Anybody been in the same situation, or can give suggestions on what I should do?
I'm having a hard time making a collaborative decision. Doctors are saying that the damage to the brain is irreversible and if he does survive, he will be severely disabled. If I take the tracheostomy route, he will be most likely in a vegetative state in a nursing home for the rest of his life.
WHAT SHOULD I DO?!
Need answers ASAP, they want a decision within next 2 days.
Thanks in advance for all responses.. God bless.
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First let me say how sorry I am for your dads condition and the situation you find yourself in. If dad does not have a living will or an advanced directive, they are the same thing. Then if mom is not alive or they are divorced, and you are the oldest child these decisions must be made by you.
Thanks to advances in medical technology we are able to keep a body alive almost indefinitely though to me this is not living. What unfortunately you have to decide is what your father would want. Would he want to be kept alive by machines breathing for him, feeding and eliminating his waste. Most people don't, some and they are few want to be kept alive at all costs if there is any chance, no matter how small, that they will survive.
I'm not a doctor, I've been a firefighter for over 30 years and it is my experience it is not how long the heart was stopped but how long the brain went without oxygen that matters. How long was dad down before someone started proper CPR. If it was over 4 minutes his chances of coming back are almost nil.
Based on what you have written about your dads condition you have a very hard decision to make but it will be the right one for your dad. He, not you or anyone else is the one to be considered here.
My suggestion is you remove all life support. Tell the doctors you want all comfort and medications continued but no heroic efforts are to be made. What this means is they continue to medicate, care, feed and hydrate your father. Though in case of his heart stopping again they do nothing to restart it.
This is the right thing to do for him. If he has the will to live he will. If not then you have made it possible for him to die with dignity, without a bunch of tubes running in and out of him and in as much comfort as the doctors can provide.
Afterwards make sure you and your family see a lawyer and have living wills or advanced directives as well as cross medical powers of attorney drawn up. You keep these documents at home if readily available should they be needed. This way no one will ever have to go through what you are now going through.
These documents need to be updated every few years to remain valid within the laws of the state you reside in.
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Is it just your decision or are there siblings and what do they think. It should be discussed by all even if only one has power of attorney.
I remember when my dad was in a coma and on life support. He had been weakened by several strokes and now was getting pneumonia often. We had a DNR for him, but to get him to be treated in a hospital for pneumonia, had to take him off the 'do not resusitate' instructions. He was treated and went back to nursing home. A short while later, a staff person in nightly checks found he had no life signs and my sister had forgotton to change back to DNR so they called ambulance and he was resusitated though he had been dead, he had no life signs on his own, they put him on life support. So when all us kids arrived at the hospital we could see a big difference from what he looked like when he was sick in hosp. with pneumonia and what he looked like now. He did not look at all as if a soul lingered in the body. He looked dead, reminded me of one of those wax figures in museums. They would keep him on life support if we changed our mind and decided to keep him that way. Or sis would change the paperwork back to DNR. Though we have our varying beliefs, the family believes we have souls and that our souls need to move on after death, that keeping a body artificially alive forces the soul that has left the body to hang around its body attached by an energy cord, unable to leave to go to heaven. We also believe that there is such a thing as miracles but in this case we all felt a peace, that it was his time to go and therefore felt horrified that his sould was not free to go. Mom had passed on 7 yrs before, he was the last living parent but having him on life support, we knew that just having his body to look at for how ever many months or years, would only delay the inevitable.
For you, have everyone you know be praying. Asking for Gods will, if this not was meant to happen and Gods plan is for him to live longer cus he has more things yet to do, then ask God to do His miracle and bring him back totally healthy without any problems the doctors predict but God must act within the 2 day limit. If it was his time to go and there is no healing, then its time to let him go. I really believe that the miracle part happens when a death by any means has come too early and there is much that person must yet experience and do in life. I have read of many stories where against all odds a person recovers.
The stories of a person meant to die and somehow didn't are not as often shared. I knew a family from church in process of moving to Arizona. They needed more time to pack. He was a bus driver and planned to work up to the day they left. At the last moment, he asked for just one day off to finish packing. He was meant to die that day. But taking the day off he didn't. His replacement took on a passenger who sat down for about 5 minutes but then walked up to the driver, waving a gun around and fighting with the driver, then shot the driver and the bus went off the overpass they were on and fell to the ground below. Between the gunshot and the crash, the driver did not survive. This friend moves to AZ. One day I get a call asking for prayer. He was just blocks from home on his motorcycle when a car driving too fast through the quiet neighborhood hit him head on. He was in ICU, almost died but pulled through. This was within a Year of other incident. Then another year later, he accidently shoots himself while starting to clean one of his guns.We knew him to be very serious about gun safety, checking for any remaining bullets before proceeding to clean but in that process, the gun went off and he was killed. Death was delayed several times but he was meant to go early, why, we don't know but I have guessed that God wanted the wife and girls to experience something, important for their spiritual growth by not having him to lean on. they were all too dependant on him from what I knew so it could likely be the reason.
I share that story so that you know that no matter which way you decide, if it was meant to be your dad's time, then he will go one way or the other, now or years later through some other event while in a nursing home.
the thing is to be able to know for sure that it is his time to go. And when I am in an agitated worried state of mind, thats when I have the hardest time hearing clearly from God. If you are able to have the peace of mind to take him off life support, then you do not have to feel guilty. God will love you no matter what you decide.
To put things in perspective, 200 yrs ago anyone this happened to would have already been dead as we lacked the medical knowledge. Therefore, it is only because of todays medical knowledge that you find yourself in a situation to make a decision to keep his body alive or allow his spirit to go on to it's rest. But there is a limit to our medical knowledge. Drs are not able to fix him up and make him just as good as before.
So perhaps you may want to look at this as an issue of 'quality of life'. A person can have a debilitating disease, but still have their mind and memories and still be able to find joy in life. I cared as a caregiver for a female in her 30s paralysed from a car accident. She needed everyone to do things for her. But she had her mind. She was a lovely person, lots of humor, always cheery, a pleasure to be around. She found purpose in life.
If there is a chance of your dad being able to have at least his cognitive abilities and memories, then I'd say there is still reason for him to live. If he has no chance of that, from the results of brain scans, it seems likely, then there will be no way for him to experience life, even in a limited fashion.
A person as a vegetable doesn't experience any form of life anymore...so my personal opinion is that it seems silly to keep a body alive by life support. It serves no purpose other than to soothe the emotions of any loved ones and family members. Its a hard decision to make, and I have tried to give you many things to think about. Hopefully I havent confused you further.
If I had the choice to make over again, would I take my dad off life support? Yes I would stick with the decision we made together.
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